Free Freaks Out! by Jean Ure Page A

I said. “We all have to do whatever we can.”
    â€œSo what are you going to do?”
    â€œI’m going to do what you suggested.”
    â€œMe?” Jem sounded surprised and pleased. “Did I suggest something?”
    â€œYou told me to go and look in my crystal ball,” I said. “So that’s what I’m going to do!”

One of my teachers once wrote on my school report that I was slapdash. Well, that is the way Mum interpreted it. What she actually said was, “Frankie must take care not to let her natural enthusiasm lead her astray.”
    Nothing whatsoever about being slapdash. It is true, however, I suppose , that I do sometimes get a bit carried away. It is difficult not to when you are eager to get on with things.
    I was positively bursting to find Skye’s pencil forher, but I knew I couldn’t just go rushing ahead. For a start, I had to find out about crystal balls and where you got them from. Could you simply go into a shop and buy one? If so, how much did they cost? Or maybe you could make them yourself. And then, once you’d made one, or at any rate got one, how did you use it?
    I told Mum after tea that I was going upstairs to do my homework – without being told! She was well impressed. Once up there, I sat on the bed with my laptop to do research. They are always telling you at school that research is important.
    â€œDon’t just go straight to Wikipedia. Look around. Read as much as you can. Get a balanced view.”
    Well! It is all right saying this, and maybe it would work OK if we were all like Skye and could read at the rate of about a thousand words per minute, but when you are just an ordinary sort of person like the rest of us, it is not what I would call practical. I could have been there all night learning aboutcrystal balls! Everybody said something different, and lots of the things they said I didn’t properly understand, so that after a while I started to get a bit desperate. I’d boasted to Jem how I was going to use my powers, and I couldn’t even work out how to begin!
    I asked myself, what would Skye do? She wouldn’t panic. She would… make a list! That was what she would do. Make a list of all the things you needed for a crystal ball, like:
    1 A glass sphere
    2 A crystal
    3 Some incense
    4 A silk scarf
    I felt a bit better when I’d made my list. I could get all those things! No problem. A glass sphere was easy, I could use Mum’s mixing bowl. A goldfish bowl would be better, but the secret of success, it seems to me, is making use of what you’ve got.
    Like, for instance, I didn’t have a crystal, but Angelhas a crystal necklace, which I reckoned would do just as well.
    Like, again, we didn’t have any incense, but we did have some stinky candles that someone gave Mum for Christmas. They were supposed to smell of sandalwood, but Dad said cow dung, more like, so Mum shut them away in a cupboard and forgot about them. She wouldn’t mind if I used one.
    The only scarves I have are thick and woolly, but Angel has this very expensive shawl that one of our grans brought back from holiday for her. It is all bright colours, like red and green and blue, very soft and slinky. Angel croons over it occasionally, and had it draped over her dressing table for a while, but she never actually wears it, so I didn’t see she could object if I just borrowed it for a bit. It seemed to me it would be more suitable than one of my old woolly jobs. Apparently when you are doing a reading (that is, gazing into your crystal ball) it is very important to make an occasion of it. You can’t just slap a mixing bowl on the kitchen tableand drape a towel over your head, or the spirits will be insulted. I think this is perfectly understandable.
    I was longing to get started, but I decided it would probably be best if I waited till next day, when Angel would be out of the house. She does get so ratty if anyone